Trend: Customized Sites for You

I thought about this the other day.

Amazon. Facebook. LinkedIn. Like me, I am sure many of you use these websites often. They are only a few of many, many websites that are excellent and accurate with recommendations, whether it is merchandise or people. For example, I logged into Amazon recently to do some Christmas shopping. Upon logging in, Amazon had recommendations for me based on my previous purchases.

Facebook and LinkedIn have very similar capabilities. Facebook actually scares me sometimes by the timing of its friend recommendations to me. I dreamt one night about an old friend from my soccer team years ago. I could not remember his name; just that he was some skinny kid with long hair. The next day I logged into Facebook and that same guy had friend requested me. Granted, it was not Facebook directly that initiated the contact, but it might have been. Perhaps Facebook subliminally put him in my head and me in his head and then recommended me to him, which then made him friend me. Either way it was a freaky experience.

LinkedIn is also great at finding past co-workers and past co-workers of co-workers, even those you do not want a connection. There is definitely a trend where sites are getting to know their customers more and more to better satisfy them. This makes sense, but it also scares me.

It scares me that they know me so well. Everything I do is traceable by them, from which links I click to how much idle time I spend on their site. What am I going to look like to them in ten, twenty, fifty years from now? Can you imagine all the data they will have on you after fifty years? I doubt Facebook will be around in its current form, but knowing Facebook will have that much data of my life stored somewhere scares me. Should it? Should I be concerned that these sites, along with many others, are tracking so much of my life? Maybe, that’s one of the reasons that sites such as Web 2.0 Suicide machine exist. I haven’t done that yet, and I don’t think I will, but I am much more aware of my actions online than before.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have a battle to fight in Mafia Wars, then order some books from Amazon, see what job Joe Schmo has now, …